Page 12 - Advanced Affortable Hearing Aids Buyiny Guide e-book

RANGES OF HEARING LOSS

AUDIOGRAMS (or hearing tests) can be a bit confusing at first. You have a chart with Frequency
along the top and Loudness down the side. You have a series of dots and lines across the graph.
Occasionally, there will be notes written across the page. What does it all mean? To offer some clarity
we have created the following image to assist you.

Frequency: Refers to the frequency in which a sound is made. As we age the upper range of the
frequency deteriorates. Often a high-frequency loss will show a downward slope from left to right.
Loudness: Refers to the actual volume of sound that a person can hear at a given frequency. This is
measured by the downward or horizontal lines on the graph. The lower on the graph, the more volume
is needed to hear at that frequency.
Conversation: Conversation generally falls in the shape of a speech banana. Depending on where
your hearing loss, falls you can either have a hard time hearing vowels on the lower frequencies or
consonants on the upper frequency (or both).
Color Code: On the graph below, we have shaded the approximate zones of various hearing loss
levels. You can print out our audiogram and copy across your information to give yourself a more clear
idea of your personal hearing loss.

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